Heaven and Hell

by Don Felder

  Amazingly, one of the people who helped Cody during this difficult time was Graham Nash’s son. He’d gone through similar experiences the previous year but had come out the other side. I’d hardly seen Graham since 1974, when I told him I was joining the Eagles and wasn’t going back on the road with him and David Blue, but now he and I were attending parent-support sessions and family therapy meetings together, often at his house, to try to help our children find their way through the labyrinth of their youth.

  “Hey, buddy, you were once my big brother, and now your son’s doing the same for mine,” I told him one night, as we hugged each other warmly and tried not to break down. We leaned on each other a lot during that hellish nightmare, and once again, my respect for him as a person increased tenfold.

  I arrived to resume work with the rest of the band in January 1994, at the very beginning of our troubles with Cody, Now there was the added worry of what it would be like to be an Eagle again. Glenn and Don had been up to their old tricks. This time, I was told, there would be no attempt to sit down and try to write great new material together, as we had in the past, for fear of opening up old wounds. Instead of a whole new album, they’d decided independently that we were going to record a live album, along with three songs the pair had written with collaborators, plus a fourth new song. The remaining eleven numbers would be a rehash of old hits like “Hotel California,” “Desperado,” “Tequila Sunrise,” “Take It Easy,” and “Life in the Fast Lane,” sprinkled with songs like “New York Minute” from Don’s solo albums and “In the City,” written by Joe Walsh. Elliot Scheiner was to be the producer.

  Before, we had tried our hardest to recognize our strengths and limitations, but this album found us tolerating weaknesses, especially in those members who couldn’t bring in any worthwhile songs. If we hadn’t let them slip something mediocre onto the disc, they wouldn’t have anything on the album at all. This was especially true of Glenn’s “Girl from Yesterday,” written with his old friend and collaborator Jack Tempchin, which had everybody’s eyes rolling. Don remarked, when Glenn wasn’t in the room, that his song was not his best work and that any country singer from Nashville could sing it better. I agree, the song didn’t sound very good, and it went down badly at our later gigs, so we eventually dropped it from our set.

  Most irritating, the fourth new song on the album was to be “Love Will Keep Us Alive,” the number written by Paul Carrack with Jim Capaldi and Peter Vale for the “Malibu Men’s Choir” demo album that he and I put together. That which Irving had so scathingly rejected as “not strong enough” was suddenly deemed worthy of inclusion in the new Eagles LP. It actually became the single with the biggest airplay from the album.

  To add to my feeling of being abused, Don, Glenn, and Irving also announced that they’d struck a deal with MTV for a live performance in April, to be aired six months later. As a final insult, “The Gods” told me they’d formed new business entities that gave them a majority position in the new companies, all but muscling me out. Don and Glenn were to be getting a much larger slice of the pie, while Joe, Timothy, and I were to share the leftovers.

  I took immediate issue with the deal and told Irving, “Hey, man, this wasn’t what the arrangement was with Eagles Limited. What the hell’s going on?” Irving told me not to worry and arranged a meeting in his office. Joe and Tim were summoned in and left the building, happy with the arrangement. Then it was my turn. I walked in to see Glenn and Don looking stone-faced. When they explained to me what they were planning, I was initially rendered speechless. When I finally found my voice, I said, “Well, wait a minute guys, that’s not what we’ve done for the last twenty-something years. We always had equal shares before. Now you want double of everything else. What’s changed?”

  Glenn sighed and formed his fingers into a steeple. “You know, Fingers,” he said, as if explaining something to a child, “this band’s like a football team. Some players are more noteworthy and more famous, and they can command bigger salaries, like a quarterback. Others are just defensive linebackers who play OK but don’t get as much money. Don and I feel we’re entitled to more.”

  Tears of disappointment welled uncontrollably in my eyes. I just couldn’t understand the shift in their minds that turned a long-standing equal partnership into something they suddenly felt they owned more of. To my mind, it was self-serving gibberish. I could hardly believe what I was hearing, especially the fact that Glenn, who’d insisted right from the start that there’d be “no sidemen,” was the one who was telling me. Quite apart from the sheer unfairness of what he was saying, his analogy just didn’t stand up. He was talking about high-rolling sports superstars brought onto a team to pep up their game as part of some multimillion-dollar deal. He and Don hadn’t been brought in. If anything, I was the one who’d been brought in to beef things up.

  Furthermore, in the fourteen years when we hadn’t been on the road together, neither Don nor Glenn had done any more for the Eagles than Joe, Tim, or me. They didn’t perform Eagles shows or do Eagles promotions. They didn’t sign any more guitars or photos or T-shirts than the rest of us. They concentrated exclusively on their solo careers, which had been independently successful and lucrative. Now they were claiming that because of their own high self-valuation of their worth as performers since their solo success, they were suddenly entitled to much more than the rest of us.

  If that were to be the case, which I disputed hotly, then Glenn should have been paid far less than Don. Worst of all, when I tried to voice my concerns and air my grievances about it, I was stonewalled and told to deal exclusively with Irving, their manager, who was my manager too. I was, in effect, negotiating against my own manager, someone I was paying to represent me. But to me, it felt he was representing Don and Glenn against me, and with much more at stake. It seemed to me the conflict of interest was insurmountable.

  In Irving’s inimitable way, he ran rings round all of us. “This is in the best interests of everybody,” he told me. “Don’t get so upset. We’ll just see how the tour goes, and then we’ll renegotiate. Don’t worry, we can deal with your concerns for later legs. You know I’ve always looked out for you and your best interest.”

  The rehearsal stage for the MTV gig and our planned tour was at Culver Studios in West Los Angeles, not far from where Susan and I and Kilo had spent our first eighteen months in California. I arrived the first day, feeling frightened and intimidated by the delicate situation our negotiations were in, and I didn’t know how to behave. If they’d wanted me to feel like a lowly sideman, then it was working. Thanks to their constant chipping away, I’d lost all confidence in my abilities and even in my usual happy-go-lucky ability to smooth things over. Glenn and I had gotten along OK on the Travis Tritt video shoot and had seen each other briefly in Irving’s office, but this was different. This was the official start of the resumption tour, and if I screwed up now, I knew all deals would be off. I was walking on eggshells the whole time. I felt I had to say, “Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir” to Glenn. I was unable to relax, and it showed, so much so that halfway through the first day, while we were waiting for Don—who continually defied the specific clause inserted into the contracts about never being late—Glenn asked me to step outside with him for a minute so he could speak to me.

  “Oh, shit,” I thought, the color draining from my face. “What have I done wrong now?”

  “Fingers, relax,” he said, placing his hand heavily on my shoulder and giving me a half smile. “I want you to know that I don’t harbor any ill feelings about what happened at Long Beach, and I really want this to work. I feel great about us getting together at this time, and it’s OK, just take it easy, and then we can all relax and have fun.”

  My nerves were undoubtedly getting the better of me, but I hadn’t realized until then how much they were affecting everyone else. I wasn’t sure if I could really trust him, but his words lifted my spirits slightly, and I allowed myself to breathe a little more freely, at least
for the time being.

  I tried my best to keep the atmosphere easy and show that I was a team player. I was always the first to arrive at rehearsals and the last to leave. I’d get there early and check my setup, instruments, and equipment with the road crew. I wanted everything I did to go smoothly. Mine wasn’t an easy path to tread. I was still seething inwardly about the deals that had been foisted upon me. A big part of me wanted to walk away from the egos and the greed and be my own man, but like a battered wife, I was afraid to speak my mind and suffer more blows from Don and Glenn, and afraid of the life outside this marriage. I didn’t have anyplace else to go.

  Joe was facing his own pressures. He was fresh out of rehab and sober for the first time in decades. I couldn’t tell if he was nervous about facing the intense scrutiny of “The Gods,” or had tremors from withdrawal from alcohol or other drugs, but, man, he was in a bad way. I was scared for him, because a couple of times, especially when he was trying to play some taxing new parts, he just couldn’t do it. His hands didn’t seem to have the dexterity anymore, and it was excruciating to watch him try.

  I started arriving an hour early to rehearse with him before the others arrived. We’d work on guitar parts during the lunch break or after they’d left. I did anything I could to try to help him practice his parts. It was strange, seeing Joe like this. He wasn’t the same old jovial José or Rubber Nose.

  When I’d driven him to the Exodus rehab center at Marina del Rey, my car windows rolled down because he reeked of alcohol, I hadn’t honestly expected him to make it. His marriage had broken up, his life was in tatters, and he couldn’t seem to kick the habit. As his buddy, and with Cody very much on my mind, I’d tried to warn him that the only way he was going to be taken back to the Eagles was if he was clean.

  “Joe, I’m gonna say the same to you as I said to Cody,” I told him, as he sat slumped dejectedly in the front seat of my car. “Nobody can do this but you, buddy. Unless you take control of the situation right now, today, then you might as well kiss the rest of your life good-bye.”

  I was intensely proud that Joe had fought his demons and won. I only hoped to God that my son would be as successful. But, man, I really missed the old Joe and his crazy sense of humor—not to mention his playing ability. In the end, we limited him to a few songs until he could find his way. He played very little at first, apart from a bit of slide on “Get Over It” and a flat-footed Nashville solo on “Girl from Yesterday.” During the recording process, Glenn and I handled a lot of the guitar parts and let Joe just stand at the back and play what he could. By doing that, we took some of the pressure off, and he relaxed into it. It wouldn’t be too long before he was back playing some of the best guitar he’d ever played in his life, but in those first faltering months of his sobriety, it was horrible to watch someone so talented struggling with something that used to flow out of him so smoothly.

  When we eventually set up on a soundstage and started playing together as a band, though, we sounded OK. We listened to the music we were making and thought, “Hey, this is gonna work.” Just in case it didn’t, we had some serious backup. This was the first show I’d ever played with the Eagles when it wasn’t just the five of us. All of a sudden, because Don and Glenn wanted to bring their own people in from their solo backup bands, we had a whole orchestra behind us, with violins and the works, plus another drummer, two keyboard players, and a saxophone/horn guy, none of which the Eagles had ever had. Horns? My father might even have approved.

  The only shock came when we all opened our mouths to sing. The magic that had come from years of working together, practicing our harmonies and our ooohs and aaahs in the locker rooms, had withered. All of a sudden, we sounded like five different voices without harmony. This was going to need work.

  I don’t think I ever fully realized the extent of our transition from an equal band to Don and Glenn with a backup group until we were in that rehearsal hall. The stage designer and production crew brought in a mock-up of the stage design that Glenn and Don had come up with, so that we could see what it would look like on the tour. The model was three feet square, with little light trusses and everything, just as it would be, complete with miniatures representing each of us, to show where we would stand, how we’d be lit, and what we would be doing. Timothy, Joe, and I gathered around to look at the stage design for the first time and were impressed. It had everything, right down to tiny mikes and amps. When the models were added, though, I could hardly believe it. The little dummies representing Glenn and Don, “The Gods,” were white, while the rest of us were black or dark brown, nondescript players at the rear of the stage that the cameramen and the lighting crew needn’t really bother with. It was so ludicrous, I had to laugh out loud.

  “Hey, Glenn,” I said, still laughing, “how come you and Don are white and everyone else is black?” I’d hoped there would be some silly explanation or that I’d latched onto some private joke they were now both going to share.

  Don looked up at me without a trace of humor in his eyes. “You’re not black, Fingers,” he said. “You’re just rusty.” Don and Glenn both broke out into laughter.

  The MTV gig was to be filmed on a Warner Brothers stage set in front of an invited live audience and carefully selected friendly media, in the style of the popular Unplugged concerts. It would be filmed, edited, and broadcast later in the year to coincide with the release of the new album.

  When I arrived at the Warner Brothers studio, I was amazed by what I saw. A stage had been built inside the set, with equipment towers, lights, and orchestra behind it. Chairs had been set up for the “intimate” concert, and the whole set was framed by a large, dark wall at the back. Behind this were parked five Winnebago trailers in a crescent shape, like the circling of the wagons, each with its own bedroom, toilet, and lounge. They were all exactly the same size, year, and color, to avoid dissension. Someone had laid a green fake-grass carpet outside each one, with folding tables and chairs. The tables were laden with cold drinks, food, and chips. It was like a giant family picnic for everyone who’d been invited on set to witness this historic event. There were record industry moguls, famous faces, and media stars in abundance. Even the legendary Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times, who was considered by many to be the greatest of all music critics, was there, and we happily posed with him for photographs before the show.

  Glenn was his usual cheery self. When I arrived for the first sound check the day before the taping, we started right at the beginning of “Hotel California,” but he interrupted and told me we needed a special introduction, “—something the fans haven’t heard before.”

  “OK,” I replied, “what are you gonna do?”

  “Not me,” he said. “Come up with something. What we need is a new acoustic introduction to ‘Hotel California.’ ”

  “An acoustic version? Would that work?”

  “Just do it, Fingers,” he said, not interested.

  “OK, when do you want it?” I asked, relieved at least to have been given something useful to do.

  “Tomorrow afternoon’s sound check at three o’clock,” he said, half smiling to himself as he walked away.

  I felt like I’d been given a test. If I passed, I could stay. If I didn’t, I was out. The pressure was immense. I went back to my trailer and sat down with a nylon-string guitar and played around with it. That night at home, I kept working on it. The difficulty is that when you’ve written a definitive piece of music that you agonized over, it’s pretty hard to come up with something different a few years later. I tried to think back to my original concept of that song, sitting out at my beach house creating what Don had dubbed the Mexican Bolero.

  “If I was gonna do that acoustically, I wouldn’t use a steel-string guitar,” I told myself. “I’d use something more Mexican, in the mariachi tradition.” I kept playing with it, trying to figure out how Joe and I could do the double stuff and not sound like imbeciles. I drew on my experiences at the Holiday Inn in Harvard Square in Cam
bridge, playing numbers I barely knew to earn a five-dollar tip. I’d had to play the most unlikely songs on an acoustic guitar back then, so why couldn’t I try something similar now?

  I finally figured it out, drawing on my free-form experiences with Flow to give me the courage to play around with the sounds. Arriving at the sound check ready to show Don and Glenn what I’d done, I took a deep breath. Glenn said, “I’ll play this chord and then this one, and, Fingers, you just go for it.” We tried it through once. I had to improvise a lot, but I’d never done that on a gut-string guitar before. I’m not a flamenco artist.

  That night, as the cameras rolled, Don said, “Go for it.” After just one rehearsal, in front of a crowd of fans who hadn’t seen us play in fourteen years and who must have been wondering if we were still relevant in the 1990s, I made up that new introduction for “Hotel” to shock them, and it turned out just fine. Don and Glenn never said a word, but I knew from their silence that they were pleased.